10 dead in Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo

Ten people have died in an outbreak of Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo , according to a toll issued Friday that said 27 other deaths were suspected to be Ebola – related .
Forty- four confirmed and probable cases have been recorded since the disease broke out in the province of North Kivu on August 1 , the health ministry said .

Two suspected cases in Goma , a city of about a million people , “ turned out to be negative ” on Thursday after lab tests , it said .

The outbreak is the country’ s 10 th since 1976 , when the disease was first identified in the DRC near the Ebola River , a tributary of the Congo .
The latest outbreak is centered in North Kivu ’ s Beni region, which shares borders with Uganda and Rwanda .

The area is plagued by violence — a problem that the World Health Organization ( WHO ) has said will hamper the emergency response . Targeted vaccination , aiming primarily at front -line health workers , began on Wednesday .

Ebola causes serious illness including vomiting , diarrhoea and in some cases internal and external bleeding . It is often fatal if untreated .

In the worst Ebola epidemic , the disease struck the West African states of Guinea , Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2013 – 15 , killing more than 11 , 300 people .

The outbreak in North Kivu was declared a week after WHO and the Kinshasa government hailed the end of a flareup in northwestern Equateur province which killed 33 people .

( AFP )

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